Gemma Hussey seems an unlikely politician; no one could accuse her of being a natural, dynastic political animal. Methodical, organised and politely ambitious, she has the presence of a kindly headmistress or psychologist. There is no rhetoric; her voice is thin, without the practised timbre of an orator and certainly lacks the poker face, smooth responses and sheer bravado of many of her former colleagues. Many observers would cite her as the personification of the traditional face of Fine Gael; educated, middle-class, complacent, affluent and clearly civilised - well removed from the traditional slap on the back "I knew your father well" style of politics favoured by the largest party.

She did not join the Fine Gael parliamentary party until late 1979 when she was 41, "and Haughey became leader of Fianna Fail". By then she had spent five years as an Independent Senator during which she introduced the first Private Members' Bill on rape to be presented to either House. Her family was apolitical. "From the early 1970s I had a peripheral involvement with Fine Gael and, anyhow, gave it up when I became an Independent Senator. There was never any discussion about politics at home." Some time after being elected to the Dail, she discovered "traces of Fianna Fail on my mother's side and some Fine Gael on my father's". Her sister Anne Kerry ran for Fianna Fail in a local election.

As a number of expensive tribunal continue to dominate the headlines, and suggestions that there is no public confidence left in politics as practised in the State has become comic understatement, the former minister and now director of the European Women's Foundation counters such simplistic observations. "It has taken these tribunals to get as far as we've got to exposing the scandals" and she points out, as neutrally as possible, that journalists have simply not carried their investigations far enough. "People must recognise now that there was a collective lapse of responsibility. The people I blame most are the people within Fianna Fail who didn't stand up to Haughey."

Of the most recent revelations concerning further payments made to Fianna Fail politicians, she says none of it has only just occurred. "It all dates from the Haughey era which I believe introduced a new element into Irish politics." Haughey, she says, "runs like a thread through modern Irish politics" and while Garret FitzGerald often emerges as a absentminded academic let loose in a world he frequently misread, Haughey, on the other hand introduced fear. "How he managed to survive the Arms Crisis still intrigues me," she says. Nor does she understand how the details of his Florentine wealth remained hidden for so long. "It was a common topic for speculation among TDs, lots of people wanted to know how he was so rich." Asked for her response to the European Commissioner's television performance she says: "I only saw a segment of it, but I did think that he handled the situation rather oddly and did no service to himself. It was really very, very badly judged."

Throughout her career, Hussey has never lost the ability to be surprised. Words such as "bizarre", "extraordinary" and "peculiar" surface throughout her cabinet diaries which she kept during her ministerial career and which were published under the title At The Cutting Edge in 1990. In that book, there is an entry for Friday, May 16th, 1986, in which she (then Minister for Social Welfare) records: "The divorce debate began this week in the Dail and Garret started to get worried about the Social Welfare implications, demanding instant solutions from me. That threw some panic into the cabinet who did like the slightly vague inclusion in the speech which I delivered at 6 o'clock yesterday evening, having listened for one-and-a-half hours to the extraordinary Dail roaring and ranting of Padraig Flynn - who really couldn't be serious about three-quarters of the things he says, surely."

Now, some 13 years later, she laughs on being reminded of an aside she once made to herself: "It now sounds a bit prophetic, doesn't it?" Agreeing that she was an unpopular minister, Hussey also remarks that her career was conducted when sexism was at a height and recalls the day she countered a Private Notice Question put by Charles Haughey on the equality package. "I went at him all guns blazing and made it very political indeed, reminding him that he had designed the directive himself as Minister for Health-Social Welfare in 1978. And I asked him was he too busy plotting then against Jack Lynch to pay attention to what he was doing." Haughey's response was to call for the removal of "this unfortunate woman". At that time his reply caused less fuss than Hussey's comments. How Irish politics have changed.

Her decision to leave the political arena was reached well before she actually did get out by choosing not to contest the June 1989 election. "I had decided when I was 50 I had done enough and I wanted to reclaim my life. Those sort of decisions are not popular and I," she says with obvious irony, "was often not very popular. I always stuck to what I felt." Having held two of the most difficult, big-spending portfolios, education and social welfare, during an economic crisis, she was often targeted and many of the attacks were personalised. "The first thing I had to do as Minister for Education was to introduce school transport charges and, as you can imagine, that didn't go down too well."

Of the many tough moments she experienced, the harshest were when faced by the teachers' unions. "They are the most articulate and the most unforgiving of unions." Faced with the teachers' demands for salary increases amounting to £170 million, Hussey questioned the morality of such demands. The reaction was strong. "It caused an uproar," she recalls, being struck that in Ireland of 1985 the word "morality" was expected to be used only in a sexual context. There was also the outrage caused by the closure of Carysfort teachers' training college. At the time she became almost immune to abuse and reached a stage of being able to note various slights with some detachment.

"Among the unpleasant people I met today on the canvass," she noted in November 1983, "was a girl who teaches in Donegal, shouting sarcasms at me, which finished up with `And congratulate Garret for his grovelling at Margaret Thatcher's feet'; a young shop assistant roaring at me about the TDs' pay rise and a truculent Irish-speaking girl and her rude mother shouting at me for not speaking Irish. Who'd be in politics?" When attending the Teachers' Union of Ireland conference, Hussey was castigated by the union's then vice-president, who collapsed during his attack. After he was helped away, the president of the union then stepped in and delivered the rest of the speech. Being attacked became a way of life for her.

Interviews and profiles invariably contained references to the Hussey family home. It is a fine, elegant Victorian house in a secluded, leafy part of Rathgar. Bought in 1970, Hussey and her accountant husband, whom she married in 1964, continue to live there despite the fact that their children, now grown, have moved out. "We did think of selling, but we'll stay." Derry Hussey collects art, the couple enjoys opera and Gemma Hussey is deputy chair of the board of Opera Theatre Company and is also a member of the board of the National Theatre Society Ltd. The ambience is of comfort rather than lavish wealth. Her study is a modest room, the books are ordered in subject categories; economics, Eastern Europe, education, finance, Irish history - working books. The only trace of flamboyance is the shocking pink fireplace.

Her retirement from party politics was followed by her being appointed to the Council of State by the then president, Dr Patrick Hillery. She served for two years. Since then she has been involved in the European Women's Foundation, which she co-founded in 1990. Devised to develop the political skills of women in the emerging democracies of eastern and central Europe, she has worked extensively in Romania, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and is soon returning to Bulgaria and will also visit Moldova. "We are trying to encourage women to become actively involved in politics and all kinds of civic involvement. The projects take the form of interactive workshops, they are exhausting and exciting. Those countries are not easy to travel in or to work in." Now it seems there is a stronger female presence in the Dail but women's involvement is still 12 per cent, pretty much the international average.

Feminism, civil rights and the struggle for peace in Northern Ireland drew her into politics. She had not been politically active at university. On becoming involved with like-minded women, she decided there was no purpose in sharing political views without being organised. In 1970, she founded the Women's Political Association - because it seemed the logical thing to do at a time when women were becoming often militantly, politically aware and anxious for change. Before this she had been a businesswoman, having set up in 1962 the English Language Institute. Admitting to being shocked by the ongoing political scandals, she remains interested by the business: "No one could be so close and then lose interest. I think once you've been in politics, you always stay interested." Is she cynical? "No, not at all, but I agree that at the moment, it is difficult to be positive."

Kindly and shrewd, Hussey's common sense shapes her views. She makes no pretence at ideology but then where is ideology in Irish politics? Of the recent marriage between Labour and Democratic Left she says, "it is the logical thing for two leftish parties of the not-so-left to do". Equally, she sees no very great difference between the Fianna Fail and Fine Gael of today. "The main difference is personalities. I am sorry for John Bruton though, Michael Lowry let him down. Until then Fine Gael could claim to be above the sort of deals which have become part of Fianna Fail." Irish politics has changed dramatically since she was in office. Ireland's first woman minister for education, Hussey was also the only woman in the often tense Fine Gael/ Labour coalition cabinets to which she belonged. She does not present herself as a crusading do-gooder, her experiences left her with few illusions. FitzGerald's decision to move her from education to social welfare via an unsuccessful reshuffle was intended to create a new position for her, that of minister for European affairs. It was opposed from within and left her in a weakened position - not of her own making.

Make no mistake, Hussey was never an Edwina Currie. But she did make a point of not receiving Communion at a public occasion, the opening of the primary school year. "There is a lot of hypocrisy in politics. I was well aware that I was the first woman minister of education, an area that the Church had always had control over. And here I was, an avowed liberal pluralist and non-practising, lapsed Catholic. Don't forget this was the time of the divorce debate." It was a public statement which she felt she had to make. She grew up in Bray, Co Wicklow, the second daughter of two chemists. "We lived on Herbert Road and my parents ran Rogan's pharmacy. It was open seven days a week and people went to them instead of going to the doctor. They were very well known. Later when I was canvassing for the Dail, the amount of people who knew me because of my parents was astonishing. Many of them said things like `they brought up half the children in Bray' or `they half reared my family'." The youngest of four, she was born in 1938 and she and her sister attended Miss Brayden's Kindergarten, "my brothers went to the local national school in Loughlinstown". Bray in the 1940s and 1950s had not yet developed into the busy dormitory town it has become. "It was a tourist resort - with the result we never went away on holidays. When school was over for the summer, you wrapped up your togs in a towel and went down to the sea. I spent my holidays at the Bray swimming club. Bray was also a community, you felt part of it. At the swimming club the older children, I know now they must have been about 12, took charge of the smaller ones who would have been about three. I was a good swimmer and I've preferred the sea to swimming pools. . . but I must say," she says with a rare note of nostalgia, "I find the sea a lot colder now".

Living in Bray has left her viewing Dublin as a foreign place despite having lived in the city for more than 30 years. "When we were young, going to Dublin was an experience. You went by the 45 bus and it took forever. Even now I'm not a Dublin person."

From Miss Brayden's, she progressed to Loreto Convent, also in Bray. However four years later, Hussey's mother, who had come from an extremely academically-minded family - "five of the seven had gone on to third level and the other two trained as nurses" - had decided the young Gemma Moran was a flibbertigibbet who seemed unlikely to pass an exam. Mrs Moran hoped her daughter might study pharmacy. "I was moved to Mount Anville, it was awful. Very strict. Life as a boarder was hard. It was like being in prison. Boys over 10 were not allowed to visit." Hussey survived and arrived at University College, Dublin, where she initially planned to study French and Spanish, taking economics as a third subject. She changed to politics and economics and mentions the former Professor of Political Economy, Patrick Lynch. "His lectures were at 9 a.m. on Thursday mornings. I never missed them. He is still one of the people I most admire." As she has introduced the subject, who are her political heroes? She seems a bit shocked but recovers quickly to point out that the real heroes were present at the foundation of the State - "that extraordinary generation that took over after the Civil War" - and she refers to the idealism and courage of W.T. Cosgrave, Kevin O'Higgins and Desmond FitzGerald. After some thought, though, she mentions the late Hugh Coveney. "He was an unusual person, he really believed in public service and was a person of total integrity. And I was really shocked by his death."

Regret appears an alien emotion to her. "I think everyone should have a few careers. I have." Of that highly emotional moment when the Fine Gael/Labour coalition she served in was dissolved, she recorded: "Now I'm home, a minister no more, and feeling glad, glad, glad."

At no time does she appear bitter, looking back over her cabinet diaries and the discussions they stimulated she says: "It was said at the time that only a woman could have written them. I suppose I noticed things a man wouldn't." The reader does feel some sense of Hussey the outsider, aware of her outsider status. She often refers to her efforts at remaining calm and impassive.

The changes heralded by the Robinson legacy created a new Ireland. Hussey chronicled this in Ireland Today, a topical social survey cum history of the progression of a rural society belatedly hurried towards a thriving economy, dramatically altered by urbanisation, industrialism and a newly acquired Europeanisation. It was published in 1993. "Ireland is doing very well but we haven't yet brought our public services up to scratch and this contrasts seriously with the private sector."